Waiting On Wednesday: The Twelve by Justin Cronin

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.



This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:



The Twelve by Justin Cronin



In his internationally bestselling and critically acclaimed novel The Passage, Justin Cronin constructed an unforgettable world transformed by a government experiment gone horribly wrong.



With The Twelve, the story continues.



In the present day: As a man-made apocalypse unfolds, three strangers navigate the chaos, desperate to find others, to survive, to witness the dawn on the other side of disaster. Lila, a doctor and an expectant mother, has been so broken by the spread of violence and infection that she continues to plan for her child’s arrival even as society dissolves around her. Kittridge, known to the world as “Last Stand in Denver,” has been forced by loss of electrical power to flee his stronghold and is now on the road, dodging the infected, armed but alone and well aware that a tank of gas will get him only so far. April is a teenager fighting to guide her little brother safely through a minefield of death and ruin. These three will learn that they have not been fully abandoned—and that in connection lies hope, even on the darkest of nights.



A hundred years in the future: Amy, Peter, Alicia, and the others introduced in The Passage work with a cast of new characters to hunt the original twelve virals . . . unaware that the rules of the game have changed, and that one of them will have to sacrifice everything to bring the Twelve down.



The scope widens and the intensity deepens as the epic tale of sacrifice and survival begun in The Passage surges forward in its breathtaking sequel—The Twelve. (Oct 16, 2012)



While The Passage didn't completely blow me away (I thought it was over-long, awkwardly paced, and a bit predictable), I enjoyed it enough to take a chance on the sequel.

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eBook ARC Review: The Corpse-Rat King by Lee Battersby

There is almost nothing better than looking forward to an upcoming release from a favourite author, getting a chance to give it an early read, and finding out that it not only lives up to all your expectations, but completely exceeds them. The satisfaction is almost immeasurable.



I say almost, because there is one thing that really is better - stumbling across an upcoming release from an author you've never read before, picking it up entirely on a whim, starting the read with absolutely nothing in the way of expectations, and being completely blown away. If the satisfaction is almost immeasurable, than the pleasure is completely immeasurable.



Such is the case with The Corpse-Rat King by Lee Battersby.



Not only did I have no expectations of this one, I wasn't even sure I'd have time to give it a read. It was one of the newest electronic ARCs available to the Robot Army, so I snagged it alongside Adam Christopher's Seven Wonders, figuring I'd give it a cursory glance if I happened to get through the other before September rolled around. It just so happened that I was between books last weekend and, completely on a whim, I decided to give it a shot.



I think I was about 10 pages in before I knew I had something special on my hands.



What Battersby has concocted here is equal parts Bruce Campbell slapstick, Monty Python absurdity, and Terry Gilliam imaginative wonder, filtered through the same literary sense of the macabre as Jesse Bullington or Neil Gaiman. It's an extremely funny, extraordinarily imaginative tale, that never stops surprising the reader with where it's going next. Really, it's one of those novels where the less you know going in, the better the reading experience is likely to be.



Marius is one of the unlikeliest heroes I have encountered in a very long time. He's a greedy, self-centred, cowardly bastard . . . who just so happens to be clever, amusing, and embarrassingly likable at the same time. He's the kind of guy who will gladly stand at your side in the face of imminent danger, but only so he can pick your pocket and knock you down at the last moment to expedite his own getaway. He is a scoundrel in every sense of the word, but an entirely pragmatic one. While he does develop significantly over the course of the novel, demonstrating a tenderness of heart and soul, he remains delightfully despicable throughout.



The writing (and storytelling) here is absolutely top notch. Battersby has a very intimate, very casual way of telling a story, one that's more conversational than literary. He's entirely aware of the absurdities of his tale, and makes no apologies for them. Whereas some authors try too hard to justify, explain, or otherwise validate the comic elements of their tale, Battersby is content to let the humour work. What's more, he proves himself equally adept at elaborate set pieces of slapstick humour, quick throwaway gags, and ridiculous asides.



There's a particularly prolonged sequence of events that involves Marius walking across the bottom of the sea, attempting to scale a submerged shipwreck, and desperately trying to reason with the skeleton of a king who was already crazy before he inadvertently merged the bones of his horse with his own. It's a scene that should have fallen apart and worn out its welcome long before the hungry shark appears on scene, but Battersby makes it work so well, it's a shame to see it come to an end .



Similarly, whereas the various tangents and asides should begin to wear away at the reader's patience, you can't help but gleefully anticipate the next one. It was these half-pages that so often had me laughing out loud, or at least visibly smirking with glee.

"Discovered less than four hundred years ago by the famous Tallian adventurer “Literal” Edmund Bejeevers, the Dog Crap Archipelago lay like a giant turd across the passage between Borgho City and the Faraway isles. Early explorers found nothing there to recommend the place to anybody, and indeed, early maps show a simple ovoid outline with the words “Don’t Bother” written inside."

Even the throwaway gags, such as the "Secret passage closed due to repair works" sign, work better than any author has any right to expect. It's all about the balance between the humour and the story, and the simultaneous commitment to both, that makes it work. Battersby never allows one to suffer at the expense of the other, and never forgets to involve the reader emotionally as well as intellectually.



This was a novel that I thoroughly enjoyed and will gleefully recommend, without reservation. Of course, Battersby has now placed himself within the first scenario I mentioned, so here's hoping The Marching Dead manages to exceed my expectations as well as The Corpse-Rat King managed to blow me away.

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Stacking The Shelves and Mailbox Monday

Stacking The Shelves is a new weekly meme being hosted by Tynga over at Tynga's Reviews. Stacking The Shelves is all about sharing the books you've added to your shelves - physical and virtual, borrowed and bought. Mailbox Monday, meanwhile, is a similar meme being hosted by Mrs. Q. at Mrs. Q. Book Addict this month (check out the Mailbox Monday blog to see who's hosting next month).

The week got off to a good start with my copy of Ripper, the latest Event Group Thriller from David L. Golemon.

On the Ebook front, this week saw a slew of review titles - Reich by Donald Allen Kirch, The Human Condition (Song of the Ancestors Book 2) by John Grover, All the King's Hoodlums by Kenton Crowther, and Shudder by Harry F. Kane.

Best of all, the week ended on a great note with my signed copies of the King Rolen's Kin trilogy by Rowena Cory Daniells, including The King's Bastard, The Uncrowned King, and The Usurper . . . and an awesome bookmark.

How about you . . . what did add to the shelves this week?

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TGIF - Feature & Follow Friday

Feature & Follow Friday is a blog hop that is designed to provide some much-appreciated exposure to the bloggers participating, and to expand their following. Hosted by Parajunkee and Alison Can Read, each of whom feature a chosen blog for the week, it's an interesting way to get to know one another.

Question of the Week: What drove you to start book blogging in the first place?



I'll be perfectly honest - I got into blogging because I wanted access to free books before they hit the store shelves. I've always been an avid reader, loyal to my favourite authors, so the idea of being able to get a sneak-peek, to read something before anybody else, really excited me. Now that I've been blogging for a year, what I enjoy most is interacting with authors, and getting to know them off the page . . . but I still get excited when I see those ARCs on my doorstep. :)



Parajunkee also hosts a Social Hop for Facebook and Twitter, which I regularly take part in. So, if you're one of those people who aren't on Blogger, or who just don't like Google Friend Connect, it's a great way to keep in touch and follow one another.

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TGIF is another blog hop designed to provide much-appreciated exposure to the bloggers participating, and to expand their following. Hosted by GReads, it's an interesting way to recap the week, pose a question, and find some exposure with a different audience.



Question of the Week: Quotes That Make You Swoon - What are some of the most swoon-worthy quotes you've experienced in a book?



I'm not sure what qualifies as swoon-worthy (I'm really not one to read anything that involves swooning), so I'm just going to go with 2 quotes from my latest read struck me as quirky:




"Discovered less than four hundred years ago by the famous Tallian adventurer “Literal” Edmund Bejeevers, the Dog Crap Archipelago lay like a giant turd across the passage between Borgho City and the Faraway isles. Early explorers found nothing there to recommend the place to anybody, and indeed, early maps show a simple ovoid outline with the words “Don’t Bother” written inside."




"The wall that surrounds Scorby City is over twenty feet thick, although nobody has tried to invade in over three hundred years. It isn’t worth the effort. Any potential invader would be so quickly and effectively wrapped in red tape that signing the necessary permission forms just to rape and pillage – and those forms actually exist – would take up most of a season."

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eBook Review: Vengeance of the Wolf by Solitaire Parke

What do you get when you cross the mystery of Criminal Minds with the politics of 24, and then cross that with the terror of Nightmare on Elm Street? Well, you get a story that's a bit uneven, and one which has trouble walking the fine line that is willing suspension of disbelief, but you also get one heck of an interesting read.



Vengeance Of The Wolf is the story of a political assassin who works through his target`s dreams. The story actually starts out with a bang-bang-bang immersion into those dreams, setting up a fantastic mystery of "how" when we discover that the deaths we witnessed don`t correspond to the physical evidence of the bodies. The very concept of being able to break every bone in the human body . . . from the inside . . . through a dream is creepy enough to compel any reader forward.



Enter Detective John Yardley and Agent Frank Williams, the two men charged with stopping the reign of terror before it reaches its ultimate target - the President of the United States. I hate to give away a plot twist, but since this one comes rather early, and since the book ultimately turns upon it, I have to saw I was shocked when they failed in their efforts. I couldn't see how anybody could stop the dreams so quickly, much less how the authorities could figure out the pattern with so little to go on, and was fully prepared for some cheesy bit of deus-ex-machina, followed by a mundane hunt-the-killer story.



Yes, I was shocked to see them fail, but also immensely satisfied to discover the book wasn't heading in the direction I feared.



Dorian is an interesting character, an almost likeable killer with whom you can`t help but sympathise. It takes a while before his motivation is fully revealed, but it worked for me, and really sold me on his cause. Celeste was definitely a surprise, and her role in the story was far from what I expected, based on our early, tantalizing glimpses. Yardley and Williams are a bit more stock in their make-up, and a bit harder to warm up to, but they definitely have the potential to carry a story (should there be another literary chance waiting).



Overall, it's a book that is more creepy than chilling, and one which moved a bit slow for my tastes (once the initial dream immersions were complete). I'm a bit on the fence as to the explanation of "how" Dorian enacted the murders, but it does work, even if it wasn`t necessarily the answer I was looking for.



A good, solid read, with an intriguing concept, and a nice flair for the macabre.

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Waiting On Wednesday: Only Superhuman by Christopher Bennett

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.



This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:



Only Superhuman by Christopher Bennet



2107 AD: A generation ago, Earth and the cislunar colonies banned genetic and cybernetic modifications. But out in the Asteroid Belt, anything goes. Dozens of flourishing space habitats are spawning exotic new societies and strange new varieties of humans. It’s a volatile situation that threatens the peace and stability of the entire solar system.



Emerald Blair is a Troubleshooter. Inspired by the classic superhero comics of the twentieth century, she’s joined with other mods to try to police the unruly Asteroid Belt. But her loyalties are tested when she finds herself torn between rival factions of superhumans with very different agendas. Emerald wants to put her special abilities to good use, but what do you do when you can’t tell the heroes from the villains?



Only Superhuman is a rollicking hard-SF adventure set in a complex and fascinating future. (Oct 16, 2012)



So, let's see - we have "rollicking hard-SF adventure" and a "complex and fascinating future" coupled with a heroine "inspired by the classic superhero comics of the twentieth century." Count me in!

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GUEST POST & GIVEAWAY by Rowena Cory Daniells

Why I love the WWW (Or How the web set me free)

by Rowena Cory Daniells





I grew up on the Gold Coast in the 60s and 70s.



Me with my cat. In the background you can see the shed. We kept chickens and grew vegetables, went swimming every weekend.

Back then the Gold Coast was fibro shacks, surf, sun and sand. All very idyllic but lacking in any sense of permanence. Back then the Gold Coast was famous for metre maids.

These were girls (not women) who wore golden bikinis and dropped coins in your metre if it ran out, so that people didn’t get tickets. (As a child I didn’t want to grow up to be a metre maid, I wanted to be an astronaut).



The closest we came to history was this wreck on Stradbroke Island.

But of course, I’d never seen it. I’d heard the grown ups mention it in passing and no one seemed to know much about it. Back then, there was no way to find out anything. I suppose I could have gone to the library and asked, but I only remember going into the library once when I was about eleven, and I didn’t know you could ask librarians to find things. I didn’t know that there were people interested in history, trying to piece the past together. See here. (The Galleon they are talking about is not the wreck in the photo above. More on the galleon here).



Back then we had one bookshelf in our home and it contained a couple of books and some magazines. I read everything I could find. The only way I could see the world was through TV which was black and white and our local TV stations must have bought a couple of seasons of Gilligan’s Island, Bewitched and Hogan’s Heroes and just kept playing them over and over until I knew the dialogue off by heart and was close to gnawing off my leg in frustration.



To put it simply I was desperately hungry for anything that gave me a glimpse of the wider world.



In my early twenties I moved to Melbourne and opened a second-hand book and record shop. It was heaven. I could read all day long and talk to people about books. As soon as I found an interesting book I would devour it, and I’d keep it just in case I ever needed to refer to it again. Books were like treasures. The more I had, the richer I felt. Beautiful books on art. Books on science. Fantasy and SF books...
In fact, it got to the point recently when I had to go through my shelves and cull my books. They were starting to block the windows.

Resorting to great ruthlessness, I sorted them into keep and give to the local second-hand bookstore piles. The second-hand bookstore gave me $500 credit. I’ve used it all up, plus every time I go to a convention I come back with a couple of hundred dollars worth of books.

Confession - It’s been over twelve months since I cleaned out my book shelves but they are stacked two rows deep again.



All of which brings me to why I love the internet. I can find out anything, at the click of a mouse. I know. It’s amazing...



Recently, I was writing a fantasy set in a dangerous tropical paradise and I needed to know how far the horizon was if you were sitting in a rowboat, then how far it was if you were up on the lookout of a sailing ship. It’s out there. The information is out there, all you have to do is look.



My ‘bookmark’ file on my web browser now looks like my bookshelves. There are hundreds of folders and subfolders with all sorts of amazing facts about the world. I love it that I can read the science blogs, and New Scientist. This is the kid who memorised the planets of the solar system when she found a book about it, just in case she never found the book again.



I love it that people put up pictures of cats with funny captions.

It is such a relief from the official news, which is all doom and gloom. The world can’t be such a bad place, when people love their pets.



I love it that I can find links like this - the Paris apartment that was locked up before World War two and only opened again recently. (There’s a romantic story attached to this apartment).



I love the wonderful but sad, like Hashima Island, where 5,000 people used to live on one square mile. But when the coal ran out the island was deserted (more photos here). And this is a link to a video made by a man who goes back to the island to look around.

The internet brings me closer to people all around the world. It’s not a perfect world. For instance, there’s this series of photos of people with degrees who spent years studying and find themselves sweeping streets or serving tables.



I love twitter because I follow artists, writers and political activists who are always putting up interesting links. I’m still hungry for information about the world and its people.



Sometimes I wonder if it’s a writer thing. Writers find people and the world endlessly fascinating because we are always observing, trying to make sense of life.
This is why I love the WWW because it has set me free. The more I learn, the more I want to know.

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GIVEAWAY

Rowena has a copy of either her gritty, noir-paranormal crime thriller The Price of Fame, or the first book of either of her fantasy trilogies, King Rolen’s Kin or The Outcast Chronicles to give away.



This competition is open to anyone anywhere in the world. 



Just answer Rowena's question in the comments below: "What do you love about the web? Surprise me!"

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